by Otto Penzler
The room was in the basement. It was comparatively narrow and about fifty feet long; but, since it was situated at one of the corners of the great building, its shape was that of an L, with the result that, from where I sat near its only door, no more than half of the room could be seen. Of the three barred windows near its ceiling, the one in my half of the room was already becoming dimly visible as a slightly lighter oblong in the darkness.
The darkness had given me quite a jolt. Earlier, at half-past ten, when I had propped my chair back against the wall and settled down to read my way through the hours ahead with the latest book on tennis strategy, it had been very quiet; I had seen to it that the three windows were all closed and fastened, so that even the distant purr of the cars across Central Park had been inaudible. Murchison, from outside, had reported every hour, but of course he had other duties than patrolling this one corridor, although he was giving it most of his attention to-night. We had considered it better, when he was called away, to leave the door locked and this he had done on each occasion. At first he had unlocked it and either come in or lounged in the doorway when reporting, but lately he had been contenting himself with calling to me through the closed entrance.
The silence, which to begin with had been complete, seemed somehow to have gotten steadily more and more profound. Imperceptibly but steadily. Oppressive was the word probably, for by two a.m. I had the distinct feeling that it would have been possible to cut off a chunk of it and weigh it on a scale.
I am a person who is essentially fond of games and outdoor life generally; being cooped up like this was uncongenial as well as unusual. As the silence grew deeper and deeper and Murchison’s visits farther and farther apart, the whole thing commenced to get on my nerves. Inside, I undoubtedly began to fidget. There was no possibility of backing out now, however. The diagrams showing just how one followed the ball to the net for volley (the proper time to do so being explicitly set forth in the text) made less claim upon my attention as the hours drew past. I had finally ended by closing the book and dropping it impatiently to the floor beside me.
Could there possibly be anything in this Curse business? Absurd! I stared across at the Codex lying on the little table near the closed door. What power for either good or evil could be possessed by some unknown Aztec, dead hundreds of years ago? It was an indication of my unaccustomed nerviness that I found it of comfort to reflect that I was in a world-famous Museum in the centre of modern New York, to be specific on upper Fifth Avenue; there must be a score of guards in the Museum itself, a precinct station was but a few blocks away, the forces of civilisation that never sleep surrounded me on all sides. I glanced at the Codex again and gave something of a start. Had it moved ever so slightly since I had looked at it before? Hell, this was ridiculous. Then the lights went out.
The effect in any case is startling and in the present instance it was doubly so. Nothing could have been more unexpected. Unconsciously, I suppose, one becomes accustomed to hearing the click of a button or a switch when lights are extinguished; even in a roomful of people, unexpected darkness descending suddenly causes uneasiness. And I was not in a roomful of people by any means. The unbroken silence preceding and following made a sort of continuity that ought to have prevented any abrupt change. Darkness, silently instantaneous, for a moment was unbelievable.
Murchison’s voice through the door a minute later was, I admit, a bit of a relief. He opened the door, flashed his light about for a moment, then locked it again and hurried away.
The guard’s light had shown the Codex quietly in its place on the table. Well, naturally; how could it have moved, since I had not been near it and no one else was in the room? A Curse from the dark past of Aztlan. The third night. Nonsense. Here was merely a matter of a short circuit. It suddenly occurred to me that that, too, might not be unimportant. Where there are short circuits, there are sometimes fires. The door was locked on the outside. I could break any of the windows, of course, if they couldn’t be unfastened, but what then? All of them were guarded by sturdy iron bars set in the stonework of the building. It was plain enough that in any emergency I couldn’t get out by myself.
I simply couldn’t help thinking how often these coincidences seemed to happen. An ancient warning and a modern calamity. It was a silly notion; it persisted in running through my head. In that inanimate manuscript written by dead Aztec hands there couldn’t possibly be anything——
When I had come into town that morning, nothing had been further from my mind than spending the night in the Metropolitan Museum. At most I had anticipated no more than calling there for a few minutes around noon to take Jim Blake out to lunch. Blake is considerably older than I am, being in fact a friend of one of my aunts; our common interest, however, is not the aunt but the game of golf, as to which we are both enthusiasts. Thus, having some business in town, I thought I might run up and compare notes with him about a recently opened course in New Jersey which we had both played, though not together. Blake had been with the Museum for years and, I understand, is now the Keeper, or whatever they call it, of their Central American antiquities.
When I found him in his basement office, however, I discovered Marius Hartmann already with him, a fellow about my own age whom I knew slightly at college and never liked very much. A quiet, studious chap, though I suppose that’s nothing against him. What I really disliked was his contempt for all sports, a matter he took little trouble to conceal. I had not seen him since graduation but had heard that he had come into a large inheritance and taken up collecting. This interest, I suppose, had brought him and Blake together but, not knowing of their acquaintance, I was considerably surprised to find him in the office.
He shook hands with me pleasantly enough but it was evident that his interest had been excited and was wholly taken up by the subject he had been discussing with Blake.
“Why, a Codex like that is priceless, literally priceless!” he exclaimed, as soon as the greetings were over. “Such a find isn’t reported once in a century. And when it is, it’s usually spurious.”
Blake, leaning back in his chair with his feet resting on a corner of his desk, grunted acquiescence. “Fortunately there’s no question of authenticity this time,” he asserted. “Our own man found it, sealed away in a small stone wall-vault in the teocalli. More by chance than anything else, he says himself. The place where it was must have been rather like a safe; they never did find out how it was properly opened. It was partly broken open during the excavation work and when they saw that some sort of storage chamber had been struck, they finished it up with a pick. As I say, it was only a small receptacle, a few feet each way, I understand.”
“I suppose that accounts for its preservation,” Hartmann reflected. “Over seven hundred years, you say? It’s a long time, that, but if this temple safe was sealed up—— Of course, we do know of manuscripts as old as seven hundred years. The oldest Codex I have is about four hundred,” he added.
I thought it was high time to find out what a Codex is, so I asked.
“A Codex, Jerry,” replied Blake with half a smile, “is a manuscript book. Strictly speaking, the thing we’re talking about is not a Codex; it’s written on stuff resembling papyrus and it is rolled rather than being separated into leaves and bound. But so many of these Central American records are Codices written by Spaniards or Spanish-speaking Aztecs after the conquest, that we have been calling this record a Codex, too.”
“But seven hundred years?” I was puzzled.
“Oh, yes, it far antedates the conquest. In fact, it purports to have been inscribed by the Chief Priest of the nation at Chapultepec on the occasion of the end of one Great Cycle and the beginning of the next. ‘Tying up the bundles of bundles of years,’ they called it; a bundle, or cycle, being fifty-two years and a bundle of bundles being fifty-two cycles, or twenty-seven hundred and four years. The end of the particular Great Cycle in question has been pretty well identified with our own date, 1195 a.d.”
Hartmann�
��s eyes were glistening as he leaned forward. “What a treasure!”
“You knew of it some time ago, I believe?” Blake asked him.
“Yes. Yes, I did. Roger Thorpe, one of your directors, told me. I offered the Museum forty thousand dollars for it, through him, before it ever got here. Turned down, of course … But I had only the vaguest idea about the contents. It appears to be even more valuable than I realised; undoubtedly it contains an historical record of the whole preceding Great Cycle.”
“More than that,” Blake chuckled, “more than that. When this is published, it is going to make a sensation, you can be sure … I don’t mind telling you in confidence that the Codex contains the historical high spots of the preceding five Great Cycles, including place names and important dates of the entire Aztec migration. In some way we have not been able to ascertain as yet, the occasion of its writing was even more impressive than the end of a Great Cycle; apparently it was the ending of an especially significant number of Great Cycles in their dating system. Possibly thirteen; we’re not sure.”
Frankly the subject wasn’t of much interest to me. I couldn’t work up the excitement that Hartmann obviously felt, and Blake, too, to a lesser degree. But I didn’t want to mope in a corner about the thing. More to stay in the conversation than for any other reason, I asked what sort of writing was employed in the manuscript.
“Eh, what sort of writing? Why, picture writing, naturally. Much more developed than the American Indian, though; more like the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Some ideographs; Chapultepec, for example, which means ‘grasshopper-hill,’ is represented by a grasshopper on a hill. But there is a lot of phonetic transcription also, in which the symbols stand for their sounds rather than the objects pictured. The curious thing is that this Codex, by far the earliest Aztec manuscript we know of, uses a much more highly developed script than the later writings just preceding the conquest. It certainly makes the Popol-Vuh look just like what some of us have always suspected—the ignorant translation by a Spanish priest of traditions that had already been badly mangled and half forgotten by the natives themselves.”
Marius Hartmann had been doing some rapid calculation. He said: “But if this covers five Great Cycles, it goes back thirteen thousand five hundred years or more from 1195. Thirteen thousand five hundred years! Why, that’s—why——”
“Oh, yes,” acknowledged Blake with an understanding grin. “It is indeed. You know the controversies concerning the origin of the Aztecs, the location of the original Aztlan from which they traditionally migrated. I’ve only had a chance for one look at the Codex myself but it appears to me to be a highly circumstantial history without any embroidery at all. The writer states definitely that Aztlan is nothing else than the Atlantis mentioned by Plato. He even gives the clear location of the ancestors of the Aztecs in one of the western, coastal provinces of the continent. After the catastrophe the survivors found themselves on the North American coast, apparently in the vicinity of what have now become the Virginia capes. From there, after the passage of thousands of years and through the operation of a good many different causes, their migrations finally carried them into central Mexico.”
Hartmann’s mouth was partly open and his eyes, I thought, would soon be popping out. “You—you believe this is an authentic record?” he stammered.
“I can only tell you this, but I really mean it. I’ve been here a good many years now, Hartmann, and so far as my own experience goes, it’s the most authentic document that I have ever come across. I’d be perfectly willing to stake my reputation on it.”
There could be no doubt about it; the man’s eyes would pop out in another minute. That would never do.
I said, “How about getting some lunch? I’m empty as a football, for one.”
The lunch was highly unsatisfactory from my point of view at any rate. Highly so. I had no opportunity to discuss the new course with Blake, or anything else about golf, for that matter. Marius Hartmann came with us; he stuck to Blake like a leech and there was no getting rid of him. Worse, they both continued to discuss the matter of the Codex with undiminished zeal. Most of the time I ate in silence and by the approach of the end of the meal I was pretty thoroughly fed up on everything connected with Aztecs.
It was during lunch that the question of the Curse came up. It appeared that the Codex really comprised two separate parts, although both were written on the same manuscript. The second part was the historical section already mentioned, while the first dealt with a religious ritual or training of some kind. “Curious,” Blake observed, “very curious. The title of the first part is almost identical with the actual title of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Pert em Hru, ‘Coming into Light.’ The Aztec title is Light Emergence, but the contents are certainly not concerned with a burial ritual or anything like it.”
Preceding this part of the Codex and introducing the entire manuscript, a species of warning had been placed. Blake quoted some of it. “Beware,” it ran, “lest vengeance follow sacrilege. Who would read the Sacred Words, let him be instructed, for ignorance conducteth disaster. Quetzalcoatl, the Reminder, (goeth) in dread splendour. The desecration of Light-Words is an heavy thing; in an unholy resting-place the third night bringeth the Empty.” And considerably more to the same general effect.
“It doesn’t sound much like the Codex Chimalpopoca, does it?” ventured Hartmann.
“Not a bit. No, we have to do with something along different lines here. The Chimalpopoca is not much more than folklore at best, written some time after the conquest, even if it is in the native language. Our Codex is a genuine article; the man who wrote it was quite certainly the religious head and he had no doubts as to what he was writing about. Not only is the form of expression quite different but the content is, too; even the language is far more evolved. The author isn’t guessing, in other words; he gives the strongest impression both of accuracy and of knowledge.”
“How do you mean, Blake? Are you hinting that you take the opening Curse seriously?”
“Well, no. I didn’t mean that exactly. I was referring more to the historical section and even to the ritual part itself. That seems to be a good bit more explicit, in parts at least, than most such compilations; from what I had a chance to read, one section appears to lead up to and introduce the following one, quite otherwise than in the usual haphazard collections. It gave me rather a strange feeling, just glancing through it.… As a matter of fact I’ve heard that you take such passages as the prefatory Curse more seriously than most of us.”
Hartmann looked up from his salad. “As a matter of fact, I do. When I meet the real thing. Of course there was a lot of pseudo-magic in Greek times that couldn’t affect a child. I mean the real thing,” he repeated. “I can assure you that I’m much more sceptical about the dictum of a modern scientist than I am about that of a High Priest of, say, the Fourth Dynasty.”
Blake smiled at our companion’s earnestness. “Can’t say I feel your way entirely. However, if that’s your opinion, to-night is your night.”
“Why? How is that?”
“ ‘In an unholy resting-place the third night bringeth the Empty.’ We’ve finally gotten the Codex to its permanent resting-place and I’ve no doubt at all that the writer would consider it unholy. To complete the point, to-night is the third one.” He paused and smiled again. “If I took it literally, I’d expect the Codex to vanish or undergo spontaneous combustion or something of the kind before morning. I shouldn’t feel any too pleasant myself, either, for I happen to be its custodian now.”
“Oh, you’re all right. It doesn’t say anything about the custodian,” Hartmann answered. I was surprised, I must admit, at the entire seriousness of his words, which were accompanied by no hint of a smile. “About reading it, that’s another matter; I don’t know whether I’d be prepared to try it or not, ‘uninstructed.’ But its custody, especially in an official capacity, will surely be harmless. It’s not as if you had stolen it or even been the one to dig it up.”
But he was continuing. “About to-night, though, that’s a different thing. If it will really be the third night and if it was set forth literally in the warning just as you said, I should be frankly anxious, in your place. What precautions have you taken?”
“It’s really the third night,” Blake acknowledged. “And the threat, or whatever you want to call it, is not ambiguous; it is simply and literally that the third night will bring ‘the Empty.’ But, thank heaven, I haven’t your idea about it and I’m not anxious at all. My word, if I worried about those things, I’d have been out of my mind long ago; I’m surrounded every working day by more curses and threats from the past than I can count. I just don’t bother about ’em. To tell you the truth, I haven’t taken any precautions,” he finished, “and I don’t intend to.”
“Surely you’ve got it locked up somewhere?”
“Oh, surely. Your friend Thorpe, by the way, is of your mind; he seems quite worried over the matter. You ought to talk to him about it … Yes, it’s down in one of the extra rooms in the basement, locked up naturally. No one could get at it down there. In the first place, a thief wouldn’t know where to look for it, in the second, although the room isn’t a bank vault by any means, it is locked; and in the third place, the usual patrols will be on duty near it anyhow. That’s safe enough from my point of view.”
